


Sisyphus

by MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: A Life in the Day, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 14:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16477391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/pseuds/MontagueBitch
Summary: Penny 40 escapes the underworld. However, time does not work in a linear fashion to the dead. What he finds on the other end of a fountain is a curious young boy, with a familiar little family.





	Sisyphus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @not-a-princess-but-a-queen on tumblr for the fandom trick-or-treat

“Your provisional corporal form request has been approved,” Stewart smiles, with the same dead-behind-the-eyes look he must have stolen from Zelda. It’s the unofficial uniform of the Library and all its branches, he thinks. “This will enable you to physically retrieve books as you take them from here to main branch.” A beat, and Stewart leans closer, wafting dust-and-stale-mints. “Only travelers ever get these, you know. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ peachy. Always wanted to lift a book.” Penny glances down at the table between them, at the horribly corpse-in-a-sheet thing in front of him. He hates how well he knows what his own lifeless form looks like. In and out and between life as he is, he feels far flung, too liminal.  “Whatever, do I slip it on like a jacket?” He hopes it’s that simple. For the love of fuck, let there be no blood ritual, or some other eldritch horror involved.

“Oh, not to worry, our staff is prepared to administer the fusion.”

“Great.”

\--

The way back to his transfer point is an open expanse of land. He can’t travel to the underworld from any point; something, he understands, about the timespace, could cause a rift if he does it wrong.  He’d gone in expecting an armed guard, ensuring he’s a friendly ghost. However, no one lifts their head, or bats a lash as they pass; he’s less visible than he’d ever been when actually invisible. And so, book replaced, he walks through an expanse of empty fountains.

Then he sees it.

A fountain of stone, with a ram rising from the middle. It sits unattended, and anyone who might suspect him couldn’t be bothered. Penny has, for the first time in far too long, a choice.

Hs hates Fillory. The worst of both mankind and magic converge in an orgiastic burst of fuckery—forced marriages, murderous locals, monsters, scorching steel. For some godforsaken reason, nearly everyone he’s been tied to (people he will swear, to the grave he doesn’t care about, let alone need) loves it. Maybe he gets it. Maybe people don’t always love what’s good for them. Fuck knows Fillory isn’t good for anyone.

However, Penny will take a punch to the gut if it pushes him out of the way of a bus. When he sees the fountain, and its rams, he runs for it. It’s time to pull some Sisyphus shit.

With a plunge, he goes down, and when he emerges, gasping for breath but somehow dry, he is dropped in a forest. He thinks of Quentin as he rises to his feet. With halting step, he approaches a tall oak, and a shaky hand lays its palm flat against the bark.

If a man hugs a tree, breathless in joy, alone in the forest where no one sees him do it, does he make a sound?

He doesn’t know which way it is to Whitespire. Fuck that shit, he’ll get there. He wanders a while, and lets himself feel the stolen delight of a body of his own, a life without chains. A Fugitive from death he may be, but now he understands the bastards of myth more intimately than anyone else could.

He wanders alone for quite some time, before he hears music in the distance. It’s soft, in a high, child’s voice, unaccompanied but by footsteps and shuffles. Curious, he’s urged on, and follows the sound, letting the words grow clearer, each sound more pronounced, until a tiny figure comes into view.

Across a clearing, a little boy looks up at Penny, eyes wide. He freezes for a moment, a stick half tucked into the bag slung over his shoulder, as if sculpted in motion. Finally, the kid swallows, stands up straight to draw himself to full height, though he is still small. Green eyes look at Penny nervously, but he crosses his arms in a show of put-on confidence. It’s kind of cute, if Penny is honest, not unlike a baby animal determined not to stumble in its first few steps. Bravery is hard the first few times.

“Are you a merchant?” he asked. “Because you’ve lost the normal merchant’s route if you are.” He’s matter-of-fact, and Penny feels bizarrely scolded.

“Not exactly.” It’s a comfort to know there  _is_  a normal route. He hasn’t wandered so far from what passes for civilization in Fillory that no one dares tread there.

The kid looks terrified again, his smirk falling as he looks behind him for a second. Penny realizes he’s set himself up as more sinister than a lost idiot surrounded by trees that all look the same.

“I’m uh,” he looks for the word least suspect, “A little lost. I didn’t mean to come here.”

“Here like the forest?” The kid asks.  “Or here like Fillory?” He lights up with a bit of curiosity at the second question. It’s a fair thing to asks, Penny susposes. Assholes from Earth pop into this kid’s world often enough that he’d be shocked if stories, thoughts and more didn’t travel, had no place in childhood imagination.

“Both.”

The kid nods knowingly. “My fathers used to live somewhere else. They don’t talk about it often—but they might be able to help you out. Or feed you, at least. You  _are_ from somewhere else, right?” he brushes brown hair out of his eyes, and Penny nods his assent. Now he’s curious—he’d assumed he’d met everyone who came through earth to Fillory; crazy assholes, all of them, and he included himself in that. But then, maybe there were those who slipped the boundary quietly, who managed to live a pleasant life. It sounded goddamn pastoral, too comfortable and loving to be familiar to a liminal thing like himself. Something like envy noted the possibility, shoved it to the back of his mind.

“Yeah, sure, kid. I’ve got friends here, but I’ll find them tomorrow.”

The boy smiles. “Follow me, then. My parents are home right now. They don’t exactly leave. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Penny,” he says. That’s one thing he likes about Fillory. No one looks at him, probong for a ‘real’ name. “What’s yours, kid?”

“It’s not ‘Kid,’” he says sourly, nine-year-old resentment clear on his face. “It’s Rupert.” He pauses. “Well, the main part of it is. I have a second name too. And a third. Dad says it’s a thing they do on Earth.”

Penny smirks, tries to bite back the laugh. “Yeah, we do that.”

“Will you tell me more about Earth? My parents get weird about it. They never tell me anything. Just that I’ll know when I’m ‘older.’ I get older every day, though, and it never happens.” Penny can’t pretend his ears aren’t burning to see these former earth-dwellers.

“Sure, Kid—”

“Rupert!”

“Whatever, Kid. Knock yourself out.”

He was about to say more, but they’ve come upon a cottage, a board full of tiles set out in front of it, with a pair of men bent over it.  One was tall, his dark hair shaggy and salt-and-pepper. The other had longer hair, shorter and stockier. “Oh, here we are,” he was already bounding up to them. The taller of the two men looked up from the tiles, opening his arms.

The pair of them talked a bit, and Penny creeped forward, with all the grace and belonging of a street cat. Eventually, the kid pointed, and both men glanced in his direction. Something was eerie, and more than that, familiar about the pair of them.

It’s the voice that does it. “Penny?” It hitches in pitch, and the look in his eyes is one of naïve shock that apparently transcends age, that he’s seen so many times. “You’re alive?”

The breath leaves Penny’s lungs in a shocked rush. “Quentin? The fuck are you doing here?” He goes forward, and realizes as he does, that the other father isn’t a stranger, either. Eliot is far from King, or even student prince, in a plain shirt and solid pants, his hair hanging partly over his face. “And uh. Kinda. I’ll get back to you on ‘alive.’”

“Jesus. Yeah, talk about a blast from the past. You haven’t aged a day,” Eliot, who’s hoisted Rupert up onto his hip, looks him up and down. “Come in. I think we all have some 'splaining to do.”


End file.
